BlackBerry Mercury Will Officially Launch On Feb. 25 At MWC 2017

BlackBerry has announced that it will be unveiling its QWERTY keyboard-equipped “Mercury” smartphone on Feb. 25 at the very first day of this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

An early pre-production unit of the BlackBerry Mercury was first shown off earlier this month at CES 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada. At the time, the software on the handset wasn’t finished yet, but the look and feel of the hardware is solid, according to Android Authority.

Unlike the all-touchscreen BlackBerry DTEK50 and DTEK60, which were both released last year, the Mercury will be bringing back the physical QWERTY keyboard. However, it won’t slide in and out of the device like 2015’s flagship, the Priv.

TCL, the Chinese company in charge of BlackBerry’s hardware, has kept quiet on the upcoming device’s specifications. Luckily, rumors have indicated that the device might come with a 2.02GHz Snapdragon 625 processor with 3GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, 18MP and 8MP cameras and a 3,400 mAh battery. The device will primarily be aimed at enterprise customers, but will also be sold unlocked to others through retailers.

Since the QWERTY keyboard is always present up front, the device comes with just a 4.5-inch 1080p full HD display. Another cool feature on the keyboard is that the fingerprint sensor is actually imbedded in the space bar. Users can also use swipe gestures on the space bar for navigating the user interface.

Another thing that’s on the BlackBerry Mercury is a USB Type-C port, which is slowly but surely becoming as common as microUSB. On the software side, the device is expected to run Android Nougat straight out of the box along with BlackBerry’s signature security software.

The BlackBerry Mercury is expected to be affordable with some speculating that it might come with a price tag that’s closer to the $300 DTEK50 and not the $500 DTEK60, according to Engadget.